Forbes contributor Joel Kotkin was invited to speak at the Advance Summit hosted by The Urban League of Greater Madison and the Madison Regional Economic Partnership (MadREP) earlier this year.

During his visit he toured the City of Madison and the EPIC campus with Mayor Paul Soglin. Not familiar with all that has been happening with Madison’s information sector scene, Mr. Kotkin left with a new appreciation and interest in Madison’s rapid growth in this field.

Mr. Kotkin explains his findings, “Employment in the metropolitan area’s information sector is up 28% since 2008, among the fastest growth in the country over that period…To come up with our list of the cities with the fastest-growing information sectors, we zeroed in on the 55 metropolitan statistical areas that have at least 10,000 information jobs, which includes software, publishing, broadcasting and telecommunications services…Our top 10 is dominated by large metro areas renowned as tech hubs – Madison, at No. 5, is the smallest by far. In first place is Silicon Valley — San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara — followed by San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City, which together employ over 110,000 information workers.”

As the Madison region continues to grow rapidly in this field we are looking to talk to businesses that are interested in growing or expanding in Madison. If you own a business in Madison and would like to share your story or work with a business that you think should move to Madison please contact Ruth Rohlich.